Tuesday, January 27, 2009

How the FDA Has Let Me Down, Again

If you read my 25 Things, you'll see that aspartame gives me migraines. Aspartame is an artificial sweetner that my body responds to with vision loss and vomiting followed by a severe headache. I used to be able to avoid this neurotoxin by not eating anything labeled as light or diet. But, it is becoming so common that I have to read all food labels and I never eat homemade sweets at picnics.

My MIL is most put out by this. I recently gave her 6 pages of articles on why artificial sweetners are evil. This was my last resort after asking her repeatedly not to feed them to my kids or buy us food with rat poison aspartame. I won't bore you with the info, its easy enough to find. Unless, you are the FDA.

While the FDA is researching the evils of stevia, mercury is the lastest contaminant they have allowed to leech into our food system. I received this link from a special needs homeschool email list.

http://www.iatp.org/iatp/press.cfm?refID=105025

I do my best around here to avoid HFCS, but I don't always have time to cook from scratch or the money for alternatives. Example: Heinz ketchup w/ HFCS is about $2 while Annie's Naturals w/o is $4 at my grocery store. The nearest Whole Foods is an hour away.

The girls and I went through the cupboards to see what we had with HFCS. Just a box of Rice Krispies and some Dole canned grapefruit. Mini Me asked about the iced tea she drinks at school and I told her it would be better for to switch to water. She, too, has a milk allergy. Does anyone know if Silk makes individual soy milk cartons?

4 comments:

Jennifer said...

I spend so much time agonizing about chemicals in our food. Thanks for pointing out this article. We have been trying to convince our parents about the evils of HFCS for awhile now, and I'm so glad to have this article to help our case. Food is so scary. I can't believe how much I have to agonize over it. Rice Krispies are the one thing we have trouble with. Aidan loves them and we can't find an organic or healthy version of them. If you know of one, let me know!

Anonymous said...

I've been told they do have individual milk soy milk cartons but I haven't found them yet. We just recently took out dairy in Adam's diet and trying to take out all processed foods. But it's hard and expensive!! Thanks for sharing article!

Lisa said...

Scary.

Michelle said...

Heinz has an organic ketchup that we buy that doesn't have HFCS in it! It's a smaller bottle than their regular sizes and of course costs a bit more, but I don't remember the price - and the price I was paying was at the commissary on base in NM, but just wanted to let you know it is available (and I don't think it was $4!)